An Appetite for God's Word

I've got four boys, and one of the "challenges" we face many evenings is getting them to make it to suppertime with an appetite.  You see, they come home from school and want a snack - perfectly understandable, right?  But if we're not careful, that snacking can turn into grazing until suppertime, and by then they've lost their appetite!

And the thing is, my wife is a good cook.  She makes great food, and she does her best to make it healthy and nourishing.  And so if they "graze" from 3:30pm-5:30pm, my sons can fill their stomachs with stuff that's not always super healthy and completely lose their appetite for the things that will truly sustain them - protein, vegetables, etc.

I wonder how often we do this with the Word of God?

Appetite Killers

Like my kids snacking their way until supper, we can "fill our stomachs" with junk food that does little for us, and curbs our appetite for real nourishment - the Word of God.  

Without much explanation or commentary, here's a sampling of things that can potentially curb our appetite for God's Word.  None of these things are necessarily bad in and of themselves.  (Neither is an afternoon snack after school, in my opinion.)  Let me say that again: None of these things are necessarily bad in and of themselves.  But if left unchecked, these things can negatively impact our hunger for the Bible.

• Social media - Constant distraction and shortening attention spans.  'Nuf said.
• Podcasts - There is LOTS of good content on podcasts available - I subscribe to more than I can listen to myself.  But if we fill our minds with incessant noise - even if it's "preaching noise" - we can either develop an overly critical attitude to other preaching or simply stop listening to it with devoted attention.
• Entertainment - We've all heard the phrase "you are what you eat," and the same can be true for media we fill our minds and hearts with.  If we spend our evenings in front of screens glorifying sexual immorality, profanity, crudeness, violence, and the like, these things can (will?) take root in us in a variety of ways.  Let's instead pursue the lifestyle Paul lays out for us in Ephesians 5:3-4 (or, more broadly, Ephesians 4:17-5:20) and Philippians 4:8.
• Hobbies - Even good things like reading and hunting and gaming and cooking and sports can become dominant things that eventually distract us from other things we should be doing.  We need to be careful that the hobbies we enjoy - which certainly have their place! - don't become the defining characteristic of our lives and pull us away from God's Word.
• Sin - OK, whatever my explanatory paragraph said before this list, this one is bad in and of itself.  Certainly, I've met a lot of people whose sin drives them to God.  It's AWESOME when people feel conviction and respond the right way.  But I also know others who love their sin more than God, and slowly isolate themselves from the people of God and the godly habits of reading and hearing God's Word preached (among other things).

Coming Hungry to God's Word

As I read through Scripture, I find again and again God's people coming to God's Word with an appetite - they're hungry for it.  Here are some verses that should shape our own approach to God's Word and keep us hungry for it:

• In Job 23:12, Job is speaking to God and says this: "I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my daily bread."
• In Matthew 4:4, Jesus says "Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God" (and He's quoting Deuteronomy 8:3, where Moses says this same thing to the nation of Israel).
• In Luke 5:1, we read that a crowd is "pressing in on [Jesus] to hear the word of God" (ESV).  This word used here for "pressing" carries  sense of urgency with it.  The impression we get is that the crowd felt they needed to hear God's Word - they were starving for it.

Can our approach to God's Word be characterized with this same hunger?  Do we approach our personal times in God's Word this way?  Do we come hungry to the preaching and teaching of God's Word in gathered settings?

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As we develop an appetite for God's Word, are there "appetite killers" I didn't mention that you thought of?  What practical things can we do to "come hungry" to God's Word?